Bob Ray's behind the curve as usualBob Ray Sanders takes the President to task for doing what everyone has been whining about for months: being more multilateral. He writes that, "Despite his litany of U.N. resolutions that Iraq has violated over the past 10 years, [President Bush] failed to make the case for invasion of the country with the expressed intent of 'regime change.'" I thought that was the point. After all, they're the UN's resolutions. What better place for the president to discuss the "litany" of violations then the institution that put them in place.

He then tells us that it's "absurd" that the President wants Congress to debate about the Iraq situation. He even likens Bush to a raving cowboy in "some kind of High Noon shootout with the bad guy." Again, I rather thought this was what the leftists wanted: more debate and less unilateralism. Why is getting Congress to discuss an important issue of war and peace "absurd?"

BS wastes the balance of his column with an extended quotation from Kofi Annan's speech, calling it "by far more meaningful." More banal is probably a bit more accurate. At any rate, to the extent that Annan drew attention to the need for countryies to make use of "multilateral institutions," it seems that Bush's talk about the UN defending its own resolutions was right on.

I guess it's clear at this point that no Bush policy decision on Iraq would have pleased Boob Ray. If he had come out and said that he and Saddam were going to skip into a field together and sniff daisies, BS would have been upset that Saddam didn't get to smell a more exotic flower.

Thursday, July 11, 2002

Wednesday, July 10, 2002

Why has Judicial Watch lost its "conservative" moniker?I noticed this in our fair paper this morning, but by the time I got to write about it, Best of the Web beat me to it with reference to an AP dispatch.

Anyway, today's story was about how the group Judicial Watch filed suit against Vice President Cheney and Halliburton for accounting fraud. Judicial Watch is described as a "government watchdog organization."

But S-T hasn't always seen Judicial Watch as a mere watchdog organization. An editorial from June 5, 2001, labeled JW a "conservative watchdog group" and blasted them for honoring the Bush v. Gore trial judge at a Washington dinner.

S-T has also referred to JW as a "conservative legal group" (4/20/01), and a "conservative activist group" (4/15/01).

S-T doesn't refer to them ideologically today. Has the group's outlook changed, or was S-T wrong to label them in the first place? Apparently, the paper must have thought that only a bad, bad, awful "conservative" group would dare sue members of the Clinton administration. But, of course, a group that sues a Republican vice-president must be a mere "watchdog" organization.

Friday, June 21, 2002

Sorry for the lack of links, but the S-T site has changed its archive system to something that is abominable and unusable. Anything I don't see on the internet the day it comes out, I have to look at the print edition.

Another reprint from the NY Times, this time a Sarah Lyall piece entitled "Denmark tough on asylum seekers." Particularly unjournalistic is the following: "But Denmark today has been rattled by the rise of right-wing politicians who have run on virulently anti-immigrant platforms." Virulent? In Lyall's own words, Denmark is "tighten[ing] the criteria for asylum seekers." Big deal. I thought the press would lay off this "right-wing" labeling after Fortuyn was killed. I guess not.

There was an editorial on Thursday applauding last week's Supreme Court decision holding it unconstitutional to require Jehovah's Witnesses to get a permit before knocking on doors. They're right, but not very consistent. The subheadline reads, "That pesky Constitution just keeps getting in the way when people want to restrict speech." Except, of course, for newspapers that want to restrict our ability to engage in political speech through the wonderful medium of "campaign finance reform."

Sunday, June 02, 2002

I used to think I'd have stuff to say about the reliably left-wing and hopelessly-indistinguishable-from-every-other-weekly-alternative-paper-in-the-country Fort Worth Weekly. Unfortunately, I haven't kept up with it recently, mainly because it's so God-awful boring.

There was a film review this week, however, that got my attention. In the movie "Sum of All Fears," the writers have changed Tom Clancy's story about how Arab terrorists blow up a nuclear device in Baltimore to a story about how "neo-fascists" blow up a nuclear device in Baltimore. A counter-factual, odd, and predictably politically correct choice. But FWWeekly reviewer Kristian Lin delivers this interpretation:

The change was made before the events of last September, and it's just as well, considering that the filmmakers here couldn't have handled Arab villains without shortchanging the complexities of politics in the Middle East.

Huh? I think Lin means that the political "complexities" would have actually justified such a terrorist action. Or maybe that those complexities justify Arab terrorists knocking down buildings. I guess in Lin's mind, an example of a movie that didn't "shortchange" these complexities is one which would have included some Arab dude explaining that he's doing all this because -- choose one: (a) female soldiers in Saudi Arabia are sleeping in their underwear; (b) evil Jews are putting the blood of Palestinian children into unleavened bread; (c) there's a Starbuck's in Cairo.

Friday, May 31, 2002

Thursday had the first World Cup dispatch from Gil LeBreton. LeBreton bugged me during the Nagano Olympics because of his constant "gee whiz" observations about sushi and bullet trains. Thursday's piece wasn't that bad (a bit heavy on the Japan-Korea hatred angle, though). I hope it stays centered on sport.